We Shine Like Stars. (Fic, GW/LL, SS/HP, NC17 -- 4/7)
Title: We Shine Like Stars 4
Author: Cluegirl
Type: Fiction
Length: Novella -- words.
Main character or Pairing: Ginny/Luna, with a side of Harry/Snape.
Rating: NC17
Canon compliancy: Shooting for canon compliance. If you squint.
Disclaimer: All HP characters are the sole intellectual property of JKRowling, whom I am not. Therefore, I make no profit from this use.
Warnings: Graphic descriptions of childbirth, but aside from that, it's pretty vanilla.
Summary: Harry is not the only one who must struggle for a sense of self against the expectations of others; Ginny's dreams are heavily mortgaged too. It takes a brush with tragedy to alert her to the very real possibility of losing all, if she does not take matters into her own hands.
Cards Drawn: The Empress, the Ace of Swords reversed, and Strength.
Card Interpretation: The Empress -- satisfaction, a competent woman spinning the future from the present.
The Ace of Swords, reversed -- Words, or the threat of them, used to destroy. A silence that is destructive. A refusal, or inability to speak up when words are needed
Strength -- Power, energy, a calm and soothing conviction. Fearlessness.
Author Notes: Thanks to the League of Extraordinary Betae: Jenna_Thorn, emessann, amanuensis1, and kaiz. And also, my plot doctor, the ever-patient aquila_dominus. The title of the song, and the verses used at the chapter heads come from the song Bullet, by Covenant.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 2a, Part 3
~*Tea, and the Alchemy of Envy *~
Time is just a fiction of our minds: I will survive and so will you
Snape watched her with narrowed, ice-pale eyes as he listened, inscrutable as a gargoyle behind the cup of tea he’d not tasted but twice. Ginny knew the glower was a scare tactic, and that he wouldn’t be using it on her unless he was frightened himself. Well… maybe more angry than frightened, given that she had practically blackmailed him into meeting her. But if Severus Snape had felt he had nothing to fear, he would not have been so very reluctant to let her have her say. He would not, in fact, have disappeared in the first place.
“So that’s my offer,” she finished her pitch, and covered her nerves with a sip of her own tea. She’d put too much sugar into it, her hand had shaken so, but it would serve to wash her nerves from her throat all the same. “The important bit, anyhow. Obviously there are still details to be worked out, but-“
He put down the cup with an impatient clink, and Ginny bit the next word off. She was babbling, damn it. A deep breath, and then she fetched out a smile, and made herself wait.
Of course he made her squirm for a bit, just staring her down from under brows that were no less forbidding for being, like his eyes and hair, leached of all colour. Snowy hair made his skin seem more olive than yellow, but it rendered the man no less forbidding or eerie. Like the ghost he had, for the space of a night, actually been.
Oddly, though, the longer Snape sat there and stared, the more confident Ginny became. He was thinking about it -- really considering it. Otherwise, he’d have shouted, hexed, or just got up and left instead of trying to turn her into a quivering mass of sweat and nerves with that infamous classroom glower.
“Luna thought of it,” she said into the silence. It was either that, or give in to the urge to giggle, and that, she expected, would lose her all hope and get her hexed in the bargain.
“Imagine my surprise,” he said at last, a cold sneer doing service for the almost-friendly smirk he might have given, had they had this discussion a year ago. “I was merely wondering what possible profit the two of you expect from such a ridiculous gesture.”
There. The olive branch she’d hoped for, her chance to really make things right again. Ginny grabbed for it harder than she’d done any snitch. “It’s not a gesture, Severus, it’s a genuine offer. The spell is on record in a dozen different places, so we know it works. The results are all well documented. I wouldn't have bothered to pry you out of that Yorkish pit of yours if I weren’t serious. It will work; there's no question on that score.” She set her own cup down and held his gaze, willing him to understand, willing him to accept.
“I do not recall asking for your references, Miss Weasley,” he snarled. “I asked what you and your lovers are planning to get out of it! If you want another squalling brat, you need only bed Potter again and neglect your contraception charm, so why should you make such a ludicrous… insulting offer to-“
“Because we want Harry back!” All Ginny’s willpower was not enough to scrape the fury out of those words, and when Snape flinched, the heat in her belly was glad to see it. “He’s been a wreck since December! Hardly better than a ghost, going through the motions of living, and it’s down to you, Severus! Merlin, what kind of coward cuts his lover free by owl post?”
“Don’t call me-“
“I will! By God, I will if you don’t prove me wrong!” Ginny slapped the table and inwardly thrilled as the china clattered, and all the other customers in the teashoppe tried to pretend they weren’t longing for the silencing spell to fail so they could eavesdrop. “You faced down Death Eaters, Dark Lords, great filthy snakes trying to bite your head off, and even Neville in your potions classes, but you couldn’t look Harry in the eye when you told him you were through?” She shook her head, and gave him back his own sneer.
“My method in severing my relations with your husband-“
“We aren’t married.”
Snape waved a hand. “Immaterial-“
“No, it’s NOT immaterial! Not to me. If I wanted to be Mrs. Potter, then I bloody well would be. I didn’t, and I don’t, and I don’t expect I ever will want to be, so stop trying to hide behind it!”
“Very well,” he ground out. “None of that changes the fact that the... dalliance had gone on long enough. I ended the matter for a reason-”
“A stupid reason,” Ginny couldn’t help muttering. His expression turned positively savage, so she knew she’d scored a hit. “Oh, you think I didn’t see your face when Harry put Jamie into your arms that day at the Burrow, then? You think I didn’t see how you looked at him?" Severus' eyes flinched, then shuttered blank. Ginny dug in harder, knowing she'd scored a hit. "I was tired, yeah, but I saw how your hands were shaking as you held him. But you never tried to give him back to Harry, did you? Not even when he fussed, and Mum came in to get him -- you almost didn't let her take him away.” The memory of cold, lofty, sarcastic Snape so reduced by the helpless bit of innocence that was her and Harry's son, softened Ginny’s anger from a blaze, to a glow. “You think I haven’t put it together that you sent Harry that letter the day Jamie and I came to stay at Grimmauld Place? Luna said you had a potion to tend, but you never came. You didn't come to check on me, or Jamie, or Harry... you sent an owl instead. And Harry hasn't been the same since.”
Snape said nothing, no denial, no protests. He just curled his long, stained fingers tighter around his cup. Enduring. That, Ginny decided, wouldn't do -- Harry had told her, after the war, just how patient Snape could be in his suffering. No, he wanted a shock for this. She was still angry enough at him to dish it without a single compunction. Folding her arms across her breasts, Ginny gave him pitiless smirk. “I grew up with six older brothers, and only a Ministry drone’s income to feed the lot of us. We had to share everything, make everything over from kid to kid. None of us except Bill ever had anything really new, or just to ourselves, among the whole family, Severus. I know envy when I see it.”
And now he really did look like a cauldron about to explode, icy brow knotted, teeth bared, hands fisted on either side of his teacup. She flicked a glance at those whitened knuckles and schooled back her urge to go for blood. “You must have known we wouldn’t have shut you away from him, Severus,” she said, and laid her hand over one of his. “You cast the diagnosis spell when I first hit the morning sickness, you brewed me nutrient and anti-nausea potions, and salves for my ankles and my gas, and you never showed a hint of wanting out. Merlin knows I gave you plenty of reasons when I got all bloated and hormonal, but you didn’t go, because you didn’t want to.” The hand under hers flexed, and she tightened her hold before he could tug away. “You tried not to show it, but you were excited about the baby, just like Luna, Harry and me. Right up until he was born. Right up until you held him, and realized how badly you wanted to keep him -- how badly you wanted your own son. Only Harry couldn’t ever give you one, could he?”
Snape’s gaze, which had gone stunned and blank, cut suddenly to the left, and Ginny had to fight not to smile when he mumbled something absurd not quite under his breath.
“My idea’s easier,” she said, and released his hand. “Safer too, since we all know I can carry a child to term without much but a hormone surge or two to worry about.” He coughed, frowned, and shielded his eyes behind his white, lank hair, too distracted to take offense at being teased. Ginny began to hope.
“What does Potter think of this idea of yours then?” He asked it as though he didn’t particularly care, which was a telling thing in itself.
“He doesn’t know I'm here with you,” Ginny replied. “As far as he knows, I’m just meeting my family counselor while he watches Jamie today.” Snape looked up, not quite masking shock and concern before he met her gaze. Ginny nodded grimly. “Harry's appointment is on Thursdays, and we all go together on Monday nights. I told you we wanted him back. Did you think we hadn’t tried anything else to reach him?”
“You,” he swallowed, “You surely will not just leave-“
“Not just like that, no,” she agreed, “We’re working on it, and we’ll keep working on it whether you’re with us, or not. But Severus, Harry needs you. He brought you back from the half-death he found you in that night because he needs you, I don’t understand why, or what it means, but I know it. I’ve seen it in his face these past six months. Whenever he thought I was too busy with the baby, or too tired to notice, whenever he thought nobody would see just how much he was hurting for want of you. He needs you, Snape; he loves you, and it’s not fair that you should take that away from him over something that’s so very easy to fix… so long as you have the guts to try.”
Snape looked down, a muscle in his jaw bunching. He's thinking what kind of a father he might be, Ginny thought, trying to scry his guarded stillness. He's counting up all the reasons he should never be allowed to further his line or care for a child. He's thinking Harry would be a fool to take him back after what he's done, and he's right; Harry would be a fool... he always has been, for Severus Snape.
Ginny went for blood. “Harry's quite different to his mother, you know, in much more than just looks," she said, and signaled for the cheque. "For one thing, Harry knows how to forgive.”
~* Cunning plans and kisses *~
“So I told him to stop trying to help me everywhere,” Ginny slashed at the lakeside weeds with her broom, scowling as the seed pods burst into the still air. “And he says he didn’t, which he absolutely did, because he’s always bloody well trying to help me with everything. He treats me like I’m a completely helpless idiot made out of glass! ‘Let me get your chair, Ginny,’ and ‘are you chilly, let’s move by the fire, Ginny,’ and ‘you should be more careful in bloody potions, Ginny!”
Luna charmed several of the wispy, floating seedpods to dance in a swirl around Ginny’s head. “Well,” she said with only a little smile as Ginny blasted the fluffy halo to cinders, “you were standing just next to Harper when his cauldron-“
Ginny interrupted her with a glower. “That healed just fine, and it wasn’t my fault anyway, which I told Dean when it happened! But from the way he went on, you’d have thought he was my mum! He told me he thought I should drop Care of Magical Creatures, did you know? Said Hagrid was a menace, and the classes were too dangerous!”
“But it’s required for our year,” Luna protested, missing the point entirely as she pulled her great, lumpy goggles down from her forehead and settled them over her eyes.
“I know! He acts like I’m still a helpless firstie that wants rescuing, and I just can’t take him any more, you know?” Ginny paced another circuit, kicking at the late season grasses, and pointedly not watching as her friend cast charm after charm at her own face. “I told him if he couldn’t start treating me like an equal instead of a baby, then we were through!”
“But after you dumped Michael Corner, didn’t you say you wanted a boyfriend who would pay attention to you?” Luna asked, then flinched, and tugged the goggles off. “I remember you said you felt like -“ she knuckled both eyes fiercely, “-- like a fashion accessory when you were with him…ooh, that stings!”
Ginny dropped beside her in the grass, and dug out her handkerchief. “Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean I want to be treated like the holiday dishes,” she said, casting aguamenti on the cloth, and pressing it into Luna’s hands. “He always acted like he was doing me some kind of favour by being with me, but Dean’s worse than my mum, dad, and all my brothers combined. Ooer. Your eyes have gone all pinkish. What have you done to yourself now?”
“Fine tuning the perspectacles,” she answered, wiping at her streaming eyes with the cloth. “They keep getting off track whenever the Headmaster or Harry walk past, but it’s not consistent. I can’t figure out what it is about powerful wizards that’s getting them so distracted.”
“They’re not the only distracted ones, either,” Ginny groused. “Come on then, let’s get you to Madame-“
“I was listening,” Luna’s hand, damp and hot on her elbow, stopped Ginny clambering to her feet. “I was. I just didn’t know what all this had to do with Harry Potter yet, is all.”
Ginny looked down at the patched knees of her jeans and tried not to blush as the memory of Dean’s voice, heated and bitter, flashed through her mind. “You know what your problem is, Ginny? You haven’t ever got over Potter’s having to rescue you back in your first year! But you don’t take it out on him, do you? Oh no, you have to punish everyone else who cares two knuts about you instead!”
“Who says it does?” she equivocated.
Luna only smiled squintingly and handed back her handkerchief. “You only whack things with your broom when you’re angry about him.”
Ginny shot her broom a glare, then gave up with a sigh. “Well, it would make things a lot easier if Harry would just wake up and see me for once,” she said, and crossed her arms over her knees to mope. “Maybe you should make a pair of perspectacles for him, because some days I don’t think he’d notice me if I dressed up like a snitch and kicked him in the bum!”
“Only there’s quite a lot of people who seem to be trying to kick Harry in the bum lately,” Luna replied, fiddling with the straps on her goggles. “I don’t think he likes that very much.”
Ginny snickered and rolled her eyes. “I didn’t mean literally!”
“Oh, neither did I, of course,” said Luna over a grin. “But maybe there’s something to the snitch idea if you were to do it a bit differently.” At Ginny’s narrow look, she shrugged and plucked a bit of wayward grass out of her yellow curls. “Well, I suppose you could kick him if you wanted to, but I think you’d do better to just kiss him instead.”
Ginny stared, speechless and startled by the sudden clamour her heart was making.
“I suppose though, it would be more polite to ask him first,” Luna said, tearing the grass to bits. “You’re staring.”
“You sure you haven’t done some permanent damage with those goggles?” Ginny countered. “Because you usually make more sense than-“
“But you do want to kiss him, don’t you?”
Ginny looked away, blushing under that earnest blue gaze. “Course I do…”
“Then just ask. You’re his friend, so I don’t see why it should be all that difficult.” At Ginny’s snort, tossed the glass and leather aside, and got to her feet. “Here, I’ll show you how easy it is. You be Harry.”
Ginny let herself be drawn up as well. “All right...”
Luna nodded, took two long steps away through the grass, then turned and waved brightly. “Hullo Harry,” she called, “have you got a moment?”
“Erm,” Ginny fought a grin and made her voice deeper. “Bit busy just now. Dark Lord to fight, world to save and all that, you know.”
“Oh, this won’t take a minute.” She hadn’t thought it possible, but Luna’s smile became even more brilliant as she came near and caught Ginny’s hand in hers. “I'd really like to kiss you now,” she said, and her eyes were deeply serious as she leaned in close. “You don't mind, do you?"
“Um... n... no,” Ginny breathed, somehow unable to look away from that empyrean gaze. “I mean, I don't. Mind.”
She had just time enough to spot the sly little dimple beside Luna’s mouth before their lips met. Gently at first, lingering like a favorite taste across the tongue, a lovely perfume haunting the memory. Then more surely, hungrily lush in the hot gust of breath into breath, the drag and pull of flesh sliding along damp, soft flesh. She let her eyes drift closed, let herself lean into the soft, pliant heat of that kiss -- a kiss that went from her toes to her hair and back again without any trace of clothes-fumbling, grunting, groping, or rushing through it to reach for something beyond.
It was just a kiss, glowing and perfect in its isolation, and deep inside her, Ginny felt a groan melt into voiceless, heated longing. Merlin, yes. This was what she wanted. Just like this… Oh, Harry…
Luna pulled back with a tiny gasp, and without thinking, Ginny caught her shoulders to keep the sweet warmth close.
“What was that you were doing with your tongue?” Luna asked, a little breathless.
Face suddenly blazing, Ginny looked away. She should let go, should back up, get her broom, and head off to Quidditch practice. Instead, she lied. “It’s something I… read about, is all. A kind of kissing.”
Luna’s eyes were grave and serious, and Ginny felt her own cross a bit trying to hold that gaze as she leaned back in. “Show me again?”
Ginny decided not to think about what that sound in her throat had meant, as their lips met, slithered together, and yielded to the hunger of tongues. She wouldn’t think about how Luna’s small, perfect breasts rubbed against her own, or about how her neck beneath her ponytail was prickling with sweat, or about how her heart was going like thunder, and she felt as though she had flown too high to breathe, but didn’t want to pull away, didn’t want to let go. Who cared about breathing anyway?
Then Luna made a desperate little sound in her throat, and the nubby mauve jumper rubbed like torture through Ginny’s practice uniform as her arms came up round her neck, and she tilted her head just so far to the side. Perfect. Her ribs swelled and eased against the circle of Ginny’s arms, her hair falling sun-warm and soft across her hands at Luna's waist. Her eyes closed in concentration as she met, matched, and improved upon all that Ginny supposed she’d ever known about kissing.
It stopped, as perfectly, as naturally, as a storm passing west to east along the summer sky. It left them gasping, stunned and leaning into each other in the sun-baked meadow. Ginny closed her eyes, pressed her chin against Luna’s shoulder, and wondered just what Luna used on her hair that made it smell so very good. She did not wonder what the skin beneath Luna’s ear might have tasted like, were she to nuzzle beneath those yellow curls to find out.
“Oh, look,” Luna’s voice buzzed through her reverie, “The Gryffindor team is warming up over the Quidditch pitch.”
Ginny resisted the urge to squeeze harder. Instead, she carefully disentangled Luna’s hair from her practice pads and took a step back. “I’d better go then,” she said, and scrubbed a hand across her still-damp mouth. “I’ll… well. See you.”
But Luna was scrambling after her goggles, which, lying neglected in the sun, had begun to set the dry grass smouldering. Ginny kicked off the ground just as Luna was summoning lakewater to douse the lot.
Mind on the bludgers, girl, she told herself sternly as she flew toward her teammates, the team is counting on you! But it was bloody hard not to dwell on how good it felt, having that broomstick between her thighs. She blushed and tried to shake it off as she crested the stands, looped around the end-field goal, and came into her position behind Harry in the practice formation.
Watching him fly wasn’t going to help her concentration either, damn it.
Ron would go simply mental if he knew.
~* Heartbreak, the Hero, and Hell to Pay *~
Ginny was lost.
But so was everybody else, so it was hardly worth making a scene, really. Everyone was reeling; Death Eaters in Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore dead, cut down by a trusted hand, the ghosts of unforgivable curses crackling in the air along with the old phoenix's final immolation. It was easy, with an aching head and a shattered heart, to breathe that spicy, acrid smoke, and to imagine all the world was burning to ashes.
Ginny watched Harry leave, watched Ron and Hermione go after him, tracked their passage across the meadow until the smoke and her watering eyes stole them from view. None of them looked back. Not even once. In a way, they hadn't been there at all -- like the light of suns that had burned out ages past, but which still twinkled, bright and hollow in a midnight sky. It seemed silly to cry for a loss when the sound of their... of his voice, the warm touch of his breath against her neck, the sweet pressure of his lip against hers was still such a brilliant ghost in her memory.
Silly to cry. Stupid to make a scene, pitch a wobbly like a spoiled, greedy baby, but oh, Ginny wanted to scream. She didn't, though. Instead, she turned around properly in her seat and watched the world burn down. The hiss of flames and fading phoenix song was nearly enough to drown out the whispers.
She stayed there, silent as in ones and twos, the Headmaster's mourners got up and drifted away. The murmurs, the whispers, all these she ignored. Some spoke to her, and though she did not actually register the words, Ginny took care to smile, nod, and display eyes that were dry, sober, and clear. Not the eyes of a girl who needed a cheering charm at all.
She always turned her eyes back to the monument as soon as they'd said their piece though, and for once she was allowed the luxury of silence. Even her mother left her to her solitude with little more than a distracted hug and a pat on the head. Ginny waited it out, numb. Numb was good. Numb was better than many alternatives she could think of.
Numb allowed her to realize that it was far more than just a wise and merry old man she’d buried in the ground today. She’d buried her dreams as well. All the silly wedding plans, all the foolish baby names, all the apple stems, longing glances, and kisses stolen from curfew and Snape’s beastly detentions. They had all come to this: dust and a shadow. A dream of light horses, galloping with the tide, and slipping away before she could even stretch out a hand.
Whatever the future would be… it could never be as that simple, silly girl had imagined it. Not now.
When the sun began to set, the chairs began to disappear, each one leaping from the grass, snapping closed, and pinging into nothingness in the exact tone of house elf magic. Ginny stirred at last and slung her nerveless leg over the chair to her right. "Leave it," she croaked, as the chair gave a shiver beneath her.
It gave another restless tug, and then was still.
When the sky had turned sore and red, Luna came, announced by the smell of cold, smuggled supper and the mundane whisper of her feet through the long grass. Ginny moved her leg back to her own chair and didn't look over as her friend sat beside her. A few moments later, Ginny caught a flicker of wandlight from the corner of her eye, but it was only a warming spell, and it settled like a hug around her shoulders before she could even gasp at it.
She closed her eyes and let the words slip out, almost as if by accident. "He's gone."
"I heard," Luna said and, reaching over, caught Ginny's hand. "How are you?"
The touch, somehow different to all those she had ignored earlier, undid Ginny's restraint completely. "I'm..." she took a breath, and the truth that escaped was a surprise even to her. "I'm bloody furious!" she hissed. "God damn Snape! And God damn Voldemort, and that cowardly shite Malfoy, and Greyback, and-“ her voice snagged on a sob. “And damn Dumbledore too!"
Heat welled in her eyes again, but now, in the soft glow of Luna’s warming charm, Ginny could let the angry tears fall. "How could he die now? Why now, when we needed him? How could he leave Ha..." but that name lodged tight in her throat and hurt too much to be prized loose.
“I don’t know that he had much choice,” Luna murmured, but Ginny was in no mood for logic or mercy.
“It isn’t fair!” Her fingernails were too short to score her palm, so she drove her fist into the meat of her thigh. “We’re not ready for him to just… to just be…”
Gone. But he was. Dumbledore, Harry, Snape, sense, order, and everything right with the world. All gone but Luna, who settled a hand over Ginny’s fist and twined their fingers as it came slowly unfurled.
"Damn him," Ginny gulped, not meaning Dumbledore at all. "Damn him for trying to protect me, and damn him for shutting me out, and damn him for going, and damn him for..."
For maybe never coming back again.
“I don’t know that he has much choice either,” Luna smoothed her thumb across Ginny’s knuckles. “Not with all he’s got to do now.”
“Bollocks!” Ginny whirled on her friend savagely. “That’s utter bollocks! Why should he have to do anything? Why’s it got to be him who stands up to Voldemort?”
Luna covered Ginny’s hands with her own again, where they knotted in her jumper. “Maybe because he can,” she mused. “I can’t think of anybody else who could manage it even once, but Harry’s done it over and over again for years.”
Which was utter bollocks, completely, wholly, and awfully wrong-headed, and Ginny wanted to shake the girl until she realized it. But she couldn’t get the breath into her lungs to shout, and the struggle bowed her back, like the weight of her impotent fury curled her shoulders and shook her to the core. It was all Ginny could manage to press her forehead into Luna’s breastbone and sob.
“He isn’t ever going to not be the Boy Who Lived,” Luna murmured in her silk-soft voice, and she wrapped her arms around Ginny’s shoulders as though the fierce, shuddering grief could be warded off like chill. “You know that, don’t you?”
“But I don’t want him because of any of that!” Ginny wailed, “I don’t want the Boy Who Bloody Lived! I don’t want the Hero of the Wizarding World! I just want Harry! Here! With me!” Words fell apart then. Too many of them backed up and screamed in her mind, while her traitorous tongue could manage nothing more than broken, animal sounds of sorrow and rage.
Luna held her close, smoothing Ginny’s hair over and over as she surrendered to the wrenching sobs. “He’s got to be both, you know,” she murmured, rocking to and fro. “Harry already belongs to History - he always has, from the first time anybody printed his name, all the way to this morning, at the funeral. Everybody who loves him has to share him with the whole world because there’s only one way that History ever lets go of anybody.” She tipped Ginny’s face up with a cool finger, and offered up a tiny, wistful smile. “And you wouldn’t want to go about being in love with the Boy Who Died, would you?”
In the face of that terrible logic, Ginny could say nothing - not that any words could have fit past the pain snarled tight in her throat, anyway. Maybe someday it would be a comfort that she could never really lose Harry, because she could never really have him in the first place.
But tonight, in the stark and scarlet light of the sun’s death throes, it only made Ginny feel all the more a fool.
Part 5
Author: Cluegirl
Type: Fiction
Length: Novella -- words.
Main character or Pairing: Ginny/Luna, with a side of Harry/Snape.
Rating: NC17
Canon compliancy: Shooting for canon compliance. If you squint.
Disclaimer: All HP characters are the sole intellectual property of JKRowling, whom I am not. Therefore, I make no profit from this use.
Warnings: Graphic descriptions of childbirth, but aside from that, it's pretty vanilla.
Summary: Harry is not the only one who must struggle for a sense of self against the expectations of others; Ginny's dreams are heavily mortgaged too. It takes a brush with tragedy to alert her to the very real possibility of losing all, if she does not take matters into her own hands.
Cards Drawn: The Empress, the Ace of Swords reversed, and Strength.
Card Interpretation: The Empress -- satisfaction, a competent woman spinning the future from the present.
The Ace of Swords, reversed -- Words, or the threat of them, used to destroy. A silence that is destructive. A refusal, or inability to speak up when words are needed
Strength -- Power, energy, a calm and soothing conviction. Fearlessness.
Author Notes: Thanks to the League of Extraordinary Betae: Jenna_Thorn, emessann, amanuensis1, and kaiz. And also, my plot doctor, the ever-patient aquila_dominus. The title of the song, and the verses used at the chapter heads come from the song Bullet, by Covenant.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 2a, Part 3
~*Tea, and the Alchemy of Envy *~
Time is just a fiction of our minds: I will survive and so will you
Snape watched her with narrowed, ice-pale eyes as he listened, inscrutable as a gargoyle behind the cup of tea he’d not tasted but twice. Ginny knew the glower was a scare tactic, and that he wouldn’t be using it on her unless he was frightened himself. Well… maybe more angry than frightened, given that she had practically blackmailed him into meeting her. But if Severus Snape had felt he had nothing to fear, he would not have been so very reluctant to let her have her say. He would not, in fact, have disappeared in the first place.
“So that’s my offer,” she finished her pitch, and covered her nerves with a sip of her own tea. She’d put too much sugar into it, her hand had shaken so, but it would serve to wash her nerves from her throat all the same. “The important bit, anyhow. Obviously there are still details to be worked out, but-“
He put down the cup with an impatient clink, and Ginny bit the next word off. She was babbling, damn it. A deep breath, and then she fetched out a smile, and made herself wait.
Of course he made her squirm for a bit, just staring her down from under brows that were no less forbidding for being, like his eyes and hair, leached of all colour. Snowy hair made his skin seem more olive than yellow, but it rendered the man no less forbidding or eerie. Like the ghost he had, for the space of a night, actually been.
Oddly, though, the longer Snape sat there and stared, the more confident Ginny became. He was thinking about it -- really considering it. Otherwise, he’d have shouted, hexed, or just got up and left instead of trying to turn her into a quivering mass of sweat and nerves with that infamous classroom glower.
“Luna thought of it,” she said into the silence. It was either that, or give in to the urge to giggle, and that, she expected, would lose her all hope and get her hexed in the bargain.
“Imagine my surprise,” he said at last, a cold sneer doing service for the almost-friendly smirk he might have given, had they had this discussion a year ago. “I was merely wondering what possible profit the two of you expect from such a ridiculous gesture.”
There. The olive branch she’d hoped for, her chance to really make things right again. Ginny grabbed for it harder than she’d done any snitch. “It’s not a gesture, Severus, it’s a genuine offer. The spell is on record in a dozen different places, so we know it works. The results are all well documented. I wouldn't have bothered to pry you out of that Yorkish pit of yours if I weren’t serious. It will work; there's no question on that score.” She set her own cup down and held his gaze, willing him to understand, willing him to accept.
“I do not recall asking for your references, Miss Weasley,” he snarled. “I asked what you and your lovers are planning to get out of it! If you want another squalling brat, you need only bed Potter again and neglect your contraception charm, so why should you make such a ludicrous… insulting offer to-“
“Because we want Harry back!” All Ginny’s willpower was not enough to scrape the fury out of those words, and when Snape flinched, the heat in her belly was glad to see it. “He’s been a wreck since December! Hardly better than a ghost, going through the motions of living, and it’s down to you, Severus! Merlin, what kind of coward cuts his lover free by owl post?”
“Don’t call me-“
“I will! By God, I will if you don’t prove me wrong!” Ginny slapped the table and inwardly thrilled as the china clattered, and all the other customers in the teashoppe tried to pretend they weren’t longing for the silencing spell to fail so they could eavesdrop. “You faced down Death Eaters, Dark Lords, great filthy snakes trying to bite your head off, and even Neville in your potions classes, but you couldn’t look Harry in the eye when you told him you were through?” She shook her head, and gave him back his own sneer.
“My method in severing my relations with your husband-“
“We aren’t married.”
Snape waved a hand. “Immaterial-“
“No, it’s NOT immaterial! Not to me. If I wanted to be Mrs. Potter, then I bloody well would be. I didn’t, and I don’t, and I don’t expect I ever will want to be, so stop trying to hide behind it!”
“Very well,” he ground out. “None of that changes the fact that the... dalliance had gone on long enough. I ended the matter for a reason-”
“A stupid reason,” Ginny couldn’t help muttering. His expression turned positively savage, so she knew she’d scored a hit. “Oh, you think I didn’t see your face when Harry put Jamie into your arms that day at the Burrow, then? You think I didn’t see how you looked at him?" Severus' eyes flinched, then shuttered blank. Ginny dug in harder, knowing she'd scored a hit. "I was tired, yeah, but I saw how your hands were shaking as you held him. But you never tried to give him back to Harry, did you? Not even when he fussed, and Mum came in to get him -- you almost didn't let her take him away.” The memory of cold, lofty, sarcastic Snape so reduced by the helpless bit of innocence that was her and Harry's son, softened Ginny’s anger from a blaze, to a glow. “You think I haven’t put it together that you sent Harry that letter the day Jamie and I came to stay at Grimmauld Place? Luna said you had a potion to tend, but you never came. You didn't come to check on me, or Jamie, or Harry... you sent an owl instead. And Harry hasn't been the same since.”
Snape said nothing, no denial, no protests. He just curled his long, stained fingers tighter around his cup. Enduring. That, Ginny decided, wouldn't do -- Harry had told her, after the war, just how patient Snape could be in his suffering. No, he wanted a shock for this. She was still angry enough at him to dish it without a single compunction. Folding her arms across her breasts, Ginny gave him pitiless smirk. “I grew up with six older brothers, and only a Ministry drone’s income to feed the lot of us. We had to share everything, make everything over from kid to kid. None of us except Bill ever had anything really new, or just to ourselves, among the whole family, Severus. I know envy when I see it.”
And now he really did look like a cauldron about to explode, icy brow knotted, teeth bared, hands fisted on either side of his teacup. She flicked a glance at those whitened knuckles and schooled back her urge to go for blood. “You must have known we wouldn’t have shut you away from him, Severus,” she said, and laid her hand over one of his. “You cast the diagnosis spell when I first hit the morning sickness, you brewed me nutrient and anti-nausea potions, and salves for my ankles and my gas, and you never showed a hint of wanting out. Merlin knows I gave you plenty of reasons when I got all bloated and hormonal, but you didn’t go, because you didn’t want to.” The hand under hers flexed, and she tightened her hold before he could tug away. “You tried not to show it, but you were excited about the baby, just like Luna, Harry and me. Right up until he was born. Right up until you held him, and realized how badly you wanted to keep him -- how badly you wanted your own son. Only Harry couldn’t ever give you one, could he?”
Snape’s gaze, which had gone stunned and blank, cut suddenly to the left, and Ginny had to fight not to smile when he mumbled something absurd not quite under his breath.
“My idea’s easier,” she said, and released his hand. “Safer too, since we all know I can carry a child to term without much but a hormone surge or two to worry about.” He coughed, frowned, and shielded his eyes behind his white, lank hair, too distracted to take offense at being teased. Ginny began to hope.
“What does Potter think of this idea of yours then?” He asked it as though he didn’t particularly care, which was a telling thing in itself.
“He doesn’t know I'm here with you,” Ginny replied. “As far as he knows, I’m just meeting my family counselor while he watches Jamie today.” Snape looked up, not quite masking shock and concern before he met her gaze. Ginny nodded grimly. “Harry's appointment is on Thursdays, and we all go together on Monday nights. I told you we wanted him back. Did you think we hadn’t tried anything else to reach him?”
“You,” he swallowed, “You surely will not just leave-“
“Not just like that, no,” she agreed, “We’re working on it, and we’ll keep working on it whether you’re with us, or not. But Severus, Harry needs you. He brought you back from the half-death he found you in that night because he needs you, I don’t understand why, or what it means, but I know it. I’ve seen it in his face these past six months. Whenever he thought I was too busy with the baby, or too tired to notice, whenever he thought nobody would see just how much he was hurting for want of you. He needs you, Snape; he loves you, and it’s not fair that you should take that away from him over something that’s so very easy to fix… so long as you have the guts to try.”
Snape looked down, a muscle in his jaw bunching. He's thinking what kind of a father he might be, Ginny thought, trying to scry his guarded stillness. He's counting up all the reasons he should never be allowed to further his line or care for a child. He's thinking Harry would be a fool to take him back after what he's done, and he's right; Harry would be a fool... he always has been, for Severus Snape.
Ginny went for blood. “Harry's quite different to his mother, you know, in much more than just looks," she said, and signaled for the cheque. "For one thing, Harry knows how to forgive.”
~* Cunning plans and kisses *~
“So I told him to stop trying to help me everywhere,” Ginny slashed at the lakeside weeds with her broom, scowling as the seed pods burst into the still air. “And he says he didn’t, which he absolutely did, because he’s always bloody well trying to help me with everything. He treats me like I’m a completely helpless idiot made out of glass! ‘Let me get your chair, Ginny,’ and ‘are you chilly, let’s move by the fire, Ginny,’ and ‘you should be more careful in bloody potions, Ginny!”
Luna charmed several of the wispy, floating seedpods to dance in a swirl around Ginny’s head. “Well,” she said with only a little smile as Ginny blasted the fluffy halo to cinders, “you were standing just next to Harper when his cauldron-“
Ginny interrupted her with a glower. “That healed just fine, and it wasn’t my fault anyway, which I told Dean when it happened! But from the way he went on, you’d have thought he was my mum! He told me he thought I should drop Care of Magical Creatures, did you know? Said Hagrid was a menace, and the classes were too dangerous!”
“But it’s required for our year,” Luna protested, missing the point entirely as she pulled her great, lumpy goggles down from her forehead and settled them over her eyes.
“I know! He acts like I’m still a helpless firstie that wants rescuing, and I just can’t take him any more, you know?” Ginny paced another circuit, kicking at the late season grasses, and pointedly not watching as her friend cast charm after charm at her own face. “I told him if he couldn’t start treating me like an equal instead of a baby, then we were through!”
“But after you dumped Michael Corner, didn’t you say you wanted a boyfriend who would pay attention to you?” Luna asked, then flinched, and tugged the goggles off. “I remember you said you felt like -“ she knuckled both eyes fiercely, “-- like a fashion accessory when you were with him…ooh, that stings!”
Ginny dropped beside her in the grass, and dug out her handkerchief. “Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean I want to be treated like the holiday dishes,” she said, casting aguamenti on the cloth, and pressing it into Luna’s hands. “He always acted like he was doing me some kind of favour by being with me, but Dean’s worse than my mum, dad, and all my brothers combined. Ooer. Your eyes have gone all pinkish. What have you done to yourself now?”
“Fine tuning the perspectacles,” she answered, wiping at her streaming eyes with the cloth. “They keep getting off track whenever the Headmaster or Harry walk past, but it’s not consistent. I can’t figure out what it is about powerful wizards that’s getting them so distracted.”
“They’re not the only distracted ones, either,” Ginny groused. “Come on then, let’s get you to Madame-“
“I was listening,” Luna’s hand, damp and hot on her elbow, stopped Ginny clambering to her feet. “I was. I just didn’t know what all this had to do with Harry Potter yet, is all.”
Ginny looked down at the patched knees of her jeans and tried not to blush as the memory of Dean’s voice, heated and bitter, flashed through her mind. “You know what your problem is, Ginny? You haven’t ever got over Potter’s having to rescue you back in your first year! But you don’t take it out on him, do you? Oh no, you have to punish everyone else who cares two knuts about you instead!”
“Who says it does?” she equivocated.
Luna only smiled squintingly and handed back her handkerchief. “You only whack things with your broom when you’re angry about him.”
Ginny shot her broom a glare, then gave up with a sigh. “Well, it would make things a lot easier if Harry would just wake up and see me for once,” she said, and crossed her arms over her knees to mope. “Maybe you should make a pair of perspectacles for him, because some days I don’t think he’d notice me if I dressed up like a snitch and kicked him in the bum!”
“Only there’s quite a lot of people who seem to be trying to kick Harry in the bum lately,” Luna replied, fiddling with the straps on her goggles. “I don’t think he likes that very much.”
Ginny snickered and rolled her eyes. “I didn’t mean literally!”
“Oh, neither did I, of course,” said Luna over a grin. “But maybe there’s something to the snitch idea if you were to do it a bit differently.” At Ginny’s narrow look, she shrugged and plucked a bit of wayward grass out of her yellow curls. “Well, I suppose you could kick him if you wanted to, but I think you’d do better to just kiss him instead.”
Ginny stared, speechless and startled by the sudden clamour her heart was making.
“I suppose though, it would be more polite to ask him first,” Luna said, tearing the grass to bits. “You’re staring.”
“You sure you haven’t done some permanent damage with those goggles?” Ginny countered. “Because you usually make more sense than-“
“But you do want to kiss him, don’t you?”
Ginny looked away, blushing under that earnest blue gaze. “Course I do…”
“Then just ask. You’re his friend, so I don’t see why it should be all that difficult.” At Ginny’s snort, tossed the glass and leather aside, and got to her feet. “Here, I’ll show you how easy it is. You be Harry.”
Ginny let herself be drawn up as well. “All right...”
Luna nodded, took two long steps away through the grass, then turned and waved brightly. “Hullo Harry,” she called, “have you got a moment?”
“Erm,” Ginny fought a grin and made her voice deeper. “Bit busy just now. Dark Lord to fight, world to save and all that, you know.”
“Oh, this won’t take a minute.” She hadn’t thought it possible, but Luna’s smile became even more brilliant as she came near and caught Ginny’s hand in hers. “I'd really like to kiss you now,” she said, and her eyes were deeply serious as she leaned in close. “You don't mind, do you?"
“Um... n... no,” Ginny breathed, somehow unable to look away from that empyrean gaze. “I mean, I don't. Mind.”
She had just time enough to spot the sly little dimple beside Luna’s mouth before their lips met. Gently at first, lingering like a favorite taste across the tongue, a lovely perfume haunting the memory. Then more surely, hungrily lush in the hot gust of breath into breath, the drag and pull of flesh sliding along damp, soft flesh. She let her eyes drift closed, let herself lean into the soft, pliant heat of that kiss -- a kiss that went from her toes to her hair and back again without any trace of clothes-fumbling, grunting, groping, or rushing through it to reach for something beyond.
It was just a kiss, glowing and perfect in its isolation, and deep inside her, Ginny felt a groan melt into voiceless, heated longing. Merlin, yes. This was what she wanted. Just like this… Oh, Harry…
Luna pulled back with a tiny gasp, and without thinking, Ginny caught her shoulders to keep the sweet warmth close.
“What was that you were doing with your tongue?” Luna asked, a little breathless.
Face suddenly blazing, Ginny looked away. She should let go, should back up, get her broom, and head off to Quidditch practice. Instead, she lied. “It’s something I… read about, is all. A kind of kissing.”
Luna’s eyes were grave and serious, and Ginny felt her own cross a bit trying to hold that gaze as she leaned back in. “Show me again?”
Ginny decided not to think about what that sound in her throat had meant, as their lips met, slithered together, and yielded to the hunger of tongues. She wouldn’t think about how Luna’s small, perfect breasts rubbed against her own, or about how her neck beneath her ponytail was prickling with sweat, or about how her heart was going like thunder, and she felt as though she had flown too high to breathe, but didn’t want to pull away, didn’t want to let go. Who cared about breathing anyway?
Then Luna made a desperate little sound in her throat, and the nubby mauve jumper rubbed like torture through Ginny’s practice uniform as her arms came up round her neck, and she tilted her head just so far to the side. Perfect. Her ribs swelled and eased against the circle of Ginny’s arms, her hair falling sun-warm and soft across her hands at Luna's waist. Her eyes closed in concentration as she met, matched, and improved upon all that Ginny supposed she’d ever known about kissing.
It stopped, as perfectly, as naturally, as a storm passing west to east along the summer sky. It left them gasping, stunned and leaning into each other in the sun-baked meadow. Ginny closed her eyes, pressed her chin against Luna’s shoulder, and wondered just what Luna used on her hair that made it smell so very good. She did not wonder what the skin beneath Luna’s ear might have tasted like, were she to nuzzle beneath those yellow curls to find out.
“Oh, look,” Luna’s voice buzzed through her reverie, “The Gryffindor team is warming up over the Quidditch pitch.”
Ginny resisted the urge to squeeze harder. Instead, she carefully disentangled Luna’s hair from her practice pads and took a step back. “I’d better go then,” she said, and scrubbed a hand across her still-damp mouth. “I’ll… well. See you.”
But Luna was scrambling after her goggles, which, lying neglected in the sun, had begun to set the dry grass smouldering. Ginny kicked off the ground just as Luna was summoning lakewater to douse the lot.
Mind on the bludgers, girl, she told herself sternly as she flew toward her teammates, the team is counting on you! But it was bloody hard not to dwell on how good it felt, having that broomstick between her thighs. She blushed and tried to shake it off as she crested the stands, looped around the end-field goal, and came into her position behind Harry in the practice formation.
Watching him fly wasn’t going to help her concentration either, damn it.
Ron would go simply mental if he knew.
~* Heartbreak, the Hero, and Hell to Pay *~
Ginny was lost.
But so was everybody else, so it was hardly worth making a scene, really. Everyone was reeling; Death Eaters in Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore dead, cut down by a trusted hand, the ghosts of unforgivable curses crackling in the air along with the old phoenix's final immolation. It was easy, with an aching head and a shattered heart, to breathe that spicy, acrid smoke, and to imagine all the world was burning to ashes.
Ginny watched Harry leave, watched Ron and Hermione go after him, tracked their passage across the meadow until the smoke and her watering eyes stole them from view. None of them looked back. Not even once. In a way, they hadn't been there at all -- like the light of suns that had burned out ages past, but which still twinkled, bright and hollow in a midnight sky. It seemed silly to cry for a loss when the sound of their... of his voice, the warm touch of his breath against her neck, the sweet pressure of his lip against hers was still such a brilliant ghost in her memory.
Silly to cry. Stupid to make a scene, pitch a wobbly like a spoiled, greedy baby, but oh, Ginny wanted to scream. She didn't, though. Instead, she turned around properly in her seat and watched the world burn down. The hiss of flames and fading phoenix song was nearly enough to drown out the whispers.
She stayed there, silent as in ones and twos, the Headmaster's mourners got up and drifted away. The murmurs, the whispers, all these she ignored. Some spoke to her, and though she did not actually register the words, Ginny took care to smile, nod, and display eyes that were dry, sober, and clear. Not the eyes of a girl who needed a cheering charm at all.
She always turned her eyes back to the monument as soon as they'd said their piece though, and for once she was allowed the luxury of silence. Even her mother left her to her solitude with little more than a distracted hug and a pat on the head. Ginny waited it out, numb. Numb was good. Numb was better than many alternatives she could think of.
Numb allowed her to realize that it was far more than just a wise and merry old man she’d buried in the ground today. She’d buried her dreams as well. All the silly wedding plans, all the foolish baby names, all the apple stems, longing glances, and kisses stolen from curfew and Snape’s beastly detentions. They had all come to this: dust and a shadow. A dream of light horses, galloping with the tide, and slipping away before she could even stretch out a hand.
Whatever the future would be… it could never be as that simple, silly girl had imagined it. Not now.
When the sun began to set, the chairs began to disappear, each one leaping from the grass, snapping closed, and pinging into nothingness in the exact tone of house elf magic. Ginny stirred at last and slung her nerveless leg over the chair to her right. "Leave it," she croaked, as the chair gave a shiver beneath her.
It gave another restless tug, and then was still.
When the sky had turned sore and red, Luna came, announced by the smell of cold, smuggled supper and the mundane whisper of her feet through the long grass. Ginny moved her leg back to her own chair and didn't look over as her friend sat beside her. A few moments later, Ginny caught a flicker of wandlight from the corner of her eye, but it was only a warming spell, and it settled like a hug around her shoulders before she could even gasp at it.
She closed her eyes and let the words slip out, almost as if by accident. "He's gone."
"I heard," Luna said and, reaching over, caught Ginny's hand. "How are you?"
The touch, somehow different to all those she had ignored earlier, undid Ginny's restraint completely. "I'm..." she took a breath, and the truth that escaped was a surprise even to her. "I'm bloody furious!" she hissed. "God damn Snape! And God damn Voldemort, and that cowardly shite Malfoy, and Greyback, and-“ her voice snagged on a sob. “And damn Dumbledore too!"
Heat welled in her eyes again, but now, in the soft glow of Luna’s warming charm, Ginny could let the angry tears fall. "How could he die now? Why now, when we needed him? How could he leave Ha..." but that name lodged tight in her throat and hurt too much to be prized loose.
“I don’t know that he had much choice,” Luna murmured, but Ginny was in no mood for logic or mercy.
“It isn’t fair!” Her fingernails were too short to score her palm, so she drove her fist into the meat of her thigh. “We’re not ready for him to just… to just be…”
Gone. But he was. Dumbledore, Harry, Snape, sense, order, and everything right with the world. All gone but Luna, who settled a hand over Ginny’s fist and twined their fingers as it came slowly unfurled.
"Damn him," Ginny gulped, not meaning Dumbledore at all. "Damn him for trying to protect me, and damn him for shutting me out, and damn him for going, and damn him for..."
For maybe never coming back again.
“I don’t know that he has much choice either,” Luna smoothed her thumb across Ginny’s knuckles. “Not with all he’s got to do now.”
“Bollocks!” Ginny whirled on her friend savagely. “That’s utter bollocks! Why should he have to do anything? Why’s it got to be him who stands up to Voldemort?”
Luna covered Ginny’s hands with her own again, where they knotted in her jumper. “Maybe because he can,” she mused. “I can’t think of anybody else who could manage it even once, but Harry’s done it over and over again for years.”
Which was utter bollocks, completely, wholly, and awfully wrong-headed, and Ginny wanted to shake the girl until she realized it. But she couldn’t get the breath into her lungs to shout, and the struggle bowed her back, like the weight of her impotent fury curled her shoulders and shook her to the core. It was all Ginny could manage to press her forehead into Luna’s breastbone and sob.
“He isn’t ever going to not be the Boy Who Lived,” Luna murmured in her silk-soft voice, and she wrapped her arms around Ginny’s shoulders as though the fierce, shuddering grief could be warded off like chill. “You know that, don’t you?”
“But I don’t want him because of any of that!” Ginny wailed, “I don’t want the Boy Who Bloody Lived! I don’t want the Hero of the Wizarding World! I just want Harry! Here! With me!” Words fell apart then. Too many of them backed up and screamed in her mind, while her traitorous tongue could manage nothing more than broken, animal sounds of sorrow and rage.
Luna held her close, smoothing Ginny’s hair over and over as she surrendered to the wrenching sobs. “He’s got to be both, you know,” she murmured, rocking to and fro. “Harry already belongs to History - he always has, from the first time anybody printed his name, all the way to this morning, at the funeral. Everybody who loves him has to share him with the whole world because there’s only one way that History ever lets go of anybody.” She tipped Ginny’s face up with a cool finger, and offered up a tiny, wistful smile. “And you wouldn’t want to go about being in love with the Boy Who Died, would you?”
In the face of that terrible logic, Ginny could say nothing - not that any words could have fit past the pain snarled tight in her throat, anyway. Maybe someday it would be a comfort that she could never really lose Harry, because she could never really have him in the first place.
But tonight, in the stark and scarlet light of the sun’s death throes, it only made Ginny feel all the more a fool.
Part 5